Today: Apple (AAPL) blows away any and all observers with a record-breaking quarterly earnings report, so here's an attempt at some context for the incredible numbers. Also: Yahoo (YHOO) earnings and Google's (GOOG) new privacy policy.

There are no words for what Apple just did, so here are a bunch of numbers

The final quarter of 2011 was a historic one for Apple, as the company had the highest earnings in one three-month period of any tech company in history, challenged the record for most profit in one quarter for any U.S. company and subsequently took the title of most valuable U.S. company from the quarterly-profit record-holder, Exxon.

Here's an attempt to process all the extravagant numbers Apple threw out Tuesday afternoon.

Advertisement

-- Revenue: Apple reported that it hauled in $46.3 billion in the last three months of 2011, nearly double the $26.7 billion it pulled in during the holiday-shopping quarter of 2010. That is the biggest quarterly revenue for a tech company in history, David Goldman of CNNMoney.com reports, topping Samsung's record of $41 billion. Apple's quarterly revenue is similar to the 2010 gross domestic product of Tunisia, which is No. 76 of 183 on the International Monetary Fund's GDP rankings. Projected over an entire year, Apple's revenue would top the GDP of all but 46 countries, including Pakistan, Peru, Vietnam and New Zealand.

-- Profits: The Cupertino company raked in $13.06 billion for the quarter, the second-highest total of all time for a U.S. company, according to Goldman, behind only ExxonMobil's fall quarter of 2008, which produced $14.8 billion amid high oil prices. Slate's Farhad Manjoo pointed out on Twitter that Apple's profits exceeded Google's revenues in the same quarter. In the same quarter last year, Apple earned $6 billion in net profit, so in one year it more than doubled its profits, an increase of 118 percent. Earnings per share were $13.87, which absolutely destroyed analyst estimates of slightly more than $10, a forecast that some considered too optimistic before the report.

-- Sales: You'll find where that doubling in profit came from inside the sales numbers: iPhone sales reached a record 37 million, an increase of 128 percent from the same quarter a year ago, thanks to the release of the iPhone 4S in October. iPad sales also reached a record, with 15.4 million sold, a 111 percent increase from the holiday-shopping quarter of 2010. Mac sales increased 26 percent, to 5.2 million, overshadowing a 21 percent drop to 15.4 million in iPod sales (who needs an iPod when you have an iPhone?). The sales of these devices helped Apple in more than just the profit from selling hardware: iTunes by itself brought in $1.7 billion, according to CNet, which is more revenue than Yahoo brought in the same quarter.

-- Cash on hand: Apple entered the quarter with a staggering $81.6 billion in liquid assets, then added some more billions to it, ending the quarter with just short of $100 billion in cash on hand. According to Wall Street Journal editor Dennis Berman, Apple's cash reserves top the worth of all but 52 companies in the world. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said in the conference call that Apple is "actively discussing uses of our cash balance," but didn't give any hints about what the company will do with that fat stack of cash.

-- Stock price: Unsurprisingly, Apple stock headed for the moon in after-hours trading, easily surpassing the company's record share price of $431.37 -- set last week. At 4:30 p.m. Pacific time, Apple shares were trading around $452, a gain of about 7.5 percent from the closing price of $420.41. That price will not be official until the markets reopen, but if it stays anywhere near that high, Apple will once again become the most valuable company in America in terms of market capitalization, surpassing Exxon. At a share price of $452, Apple's market cap would be more than $421 billion; Exxon had a market cap of slightly less than $418 billion after Tuesday's trading session.

Analysts were just as incredulous as reporters looking for possible comparisons.

"This is more than spectacular,'' analyst Tim Bajarin, of Creative Strategies, told Mercury News staff writer Pat May. "They had a record-setting blowout quarter with incremental upgrades to the iPhone and the Mac. Imagine what 2012 will be like with a new version of the iPhone, the iPad and maybe even an all-new Mac.''

The one person who seemed to take the news in stride was new Apple CEO Tim Cook, who proved to be a master of understatement by saying "Apple's momentum is incredibly strong."

Yahoo's earnings dip from 2010, in line with analyst projections

Yahoo's earnings were likely to be overshadowed by Apple's no matter the results, but the Sunnyvale company relegated itself to the background on Tuesday with a quarterly earnings report that nearly aligned perfectly with analysts' pessimistic expectations.

Yahoo said it had $1.17 billion in revenue for the quarter ending in December, after subtracting advertising commissions, or a 3 percent decline from the same period a year ago. Net income was $296 million, or 5 percent less than a year ago.

Earnings amounted to 24 cents a share. Wall Street analysts were expecting Yahoo to report earnings of 24 cents a share on revenue of $1.19 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

New CEO Scott Thompson, brought in after the quarter had ended, talked hopefully about the future while admitting that Yahoo is not performing at the level it must to compete in Silicon Valley.

"We need to do better and we will," Thompson told analysts on a conference call, later adding that he wants to focus on "generating real, sustainable growth."

Yahoo stock fell less than 1 percent in after-hours trading after gaining just a penny in regular trading Tuesday.

Google revamps privacy policy, offers one for all

As other tech companies were dominating the news with earnings reports, Google attempted to slide some big news through: The Mountain View-based Internet giant revamped its privacy policy in a giant manner, combining dozens of standards for all its different properties into one, general policy.

"Our new policy reflects our desire to create a simple product experience that does what you need, when you want it to," Google said in a statement.

While the policy is slightly longer than the main privacy statement Google now works under, it is consistent across the myriad entities Google owns, such as Gmail, Picasa and Google+.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Down 1.35, or 0.10 percent, to 1,314.65

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.